Nontraditonal Workers: How to Get Hired Without a Degree

As a job seeker, the more experience you have, the more marketable you may seem. But for some industries, a bachelor’s or advanced degree can give an added boost, and can sometimes be a required prerequisite. So, what if you don’t have a degree? How do you land that coveted gig you know you could excel at?

Career coach and blogger Marty Nemko says it is, in fact, possible to get the gig without the degree, and notes there are some myths job seekers hold on to as if they’re truths in terms of education and its relation to job marketability. He writes for AOL Jobs:

Conventional wisdom holds that getting a degree is worth it. Advocates cite the (misleading) statistic that college degree holders earn $1 million more. They also argue that getting a degree is a good way to wait out the lousy job market.

I used to believe that but I’m no longer as sure.

Why the $1 million stat is misleading The pool of college graduates tends to be brighter, more motivated, and better connected than is the pool of non-graduates. You could lock college graduates in a closet for four years after high school and they would still earn much more. The million-dollar statistic is misleading also because it’s retrospective to a time when only the best and brightest went to college and employers couldn’t offshore jobs and so had to pay high salaries to college graduates. Alas, that’s no longer true. In 1970, 40 percent of high school graduates went to college. Now over 70 percent attend college.